10/04/2024
Has anyone ever told you that you have adrenal fatigue? You know, when you don't have the energy to get up and make a sandwich? Read to the end and you will find out a big cause of this!
What is the first thing that happens when you see a bear charging down the trail when you're up in the mountains hiking? It's the activation of your fight or flight part of the autonomic nervous system. This puts all of the functions in your body, including the brain and neurotransmitters, into a primitive, protective, survival mode. This part of the brain is often called the lizard/primitive brain. The functions of the body that get activated by this sympathetic nervous system is not a choice that you make! It is automatic and if you've ever had that system go into full activation, you will know how remarkable it is, and, often times, we do things that appear that we had superhuman strength or superhuman capabilities that we normally would not have!
In fact, think about when someone has related to you what happened when they got in an auto accident! Almost always, you will hear comments like this, "It seemed like everything was going in slow motion!"
Do you know why that is? Because, compared to the normal functioning brain, everything was so rapidly accelerated in your brain and in your body that everything on the outside appears to be going much slower! This is so you can get away or chase the thing that you need to chase but it is not helpful or appropriate after the incident has come to an end!
One of the functions that gets activated is rapid increase of your adrenal gland's output of adrenaline! This is such an important function that the neurons that control your sympathetic functions are mostly not even in the brain! They are on the outside of your spinal column. They are out on site, right next to your organs so that your rapid response team can go into effect immediately! This is because, when a tiger is chasing us, we don't have time to sit there and ponder and try to send a message down consciously to activate all of your organs and muscles to run away! It is out of our control and it is immediate!
Another immediate response is anxiety! You better be anxious or you might not even live for the next 10 minutes! This allows us to get away and save our own lives
When that system turns on, it inhibits the functions of the other emergency response system called our parasympathetic nervous system! This system activates digestion, immune function, relaxation, sleep, feelings of being relaxed and etc!
These two systems have what I call a "teeter-totter" relationship! And the main concept is that when one system gets activated, the other system gets inhibited. This means that the one that is activated is the dominant one!
After an event that activates your sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight, everything is supposed to come back down to neutral so that you can have either system when needed.
Many times, after repetitive trauma, whether it's emotional trauma, chemical exposure such as the effects of mold, heavy metals, Lyme disease and more, or head trauma, that system stays activated and does not come down to neutral and therefor, continues to inhibit the other one! Most often, it is the sympathetic nervous system that does this and it is what brings people into my office! They always state that they can't understand why they can't relax, why they can't turn their brain off, why they can't sleep, why they have difficulty paying attention, why they are having memory problems, why they have no energy, why they can't digest food very well, why they have really slow bowel movements, why they have gained weight and many more!
When the system is activated it really hampers our circadian rhythm of our sleep and awake cycle! When this gets messed up, our hormone balance gets off!
When a person comes into my office we test to see how many of the purely parasympathetic functions are not working. Every single person has at least half of the 14 parasympathetic functions I test that are not working! How could they be working? The power of that system is being taken and stolen by the overactive sympathetic nervous system that is dominant.
A person is most likely to want to avoid bright lights, sometimes can't swallow pills very well, has noticed a problem with their near vision because their eyes won't converge to focus on a single point (it's not a lens problem) and many more!
Once the brain is stuck in emergency mode, all kinds of changes start to happen with the neurotransmitters in the brain because the brain is more concerned about keeping you alert and hypervigilant about the thing that is chasing you, metaphorically speaking, than it is to healing something that you have, killing something that you have eating you (parasites, bacteria, viruses or fungus) or preventing you from relaxing or sleeping so that the thing that's chasing you won't take you out!
At Clear Mind Idaho , we have a free consultation and an examination of your parasympathetic nervous system to see how much of it is being inhibited by your overactive fight or flight, or sympathetic nervous system. We have ways of balancing it out and all of those functions turn back on! Really! They really do! And, not so coincidentally, as they turn back on, the symptoms go away!
In this free consultation, I explain what is going on and it is always comforting to patients to know how they got where they are and that it is not a life sentence!
